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Invert Sugar Syrup Manufacture Technology

The substance known colloquially as table sugar is actually sucrose, a disaccharide composed of fructose and glucose. Sucrose is a major agriculturally derived product with an established industry for its extraction, processing and supply. It is mainly employed as a sweetener in industrial and domestic food applications, but also finds additional uses in the pharmaceutical industry, in chemical manufacturing, and as a feedstock for fermentation processes. For example, sugar is used as a feedstock for the manufacture of bio-based chemicals, such as bio-succinic acid.

Sugar generally exists commercially as a solid granular product. However, some food manufacturers prefer to use sugar in a liquid form, due to the ease of handling a liquid product. One commercially available liquid-sugar product is liquid invert sugar, also known as invert syrup. It is produced from the inversion of sucrose, which refers to the hydrolysis of the disaccharide molecule into its constituent parts, the monosaccharides glucose and fructose. The result of this reaction is a product with greater sweetening power and improved microbiological stability, when compared to sucrose.

Invert syrups are commercialized with different combinations of invert sugar and sucrose contents, depending on the degree of inversion performed. Also, invert syrups can be produced by three different inversion processes: acid hydrolysis with mineral acids; enzymatic hydrolysis; or hydrolysis by cation ion-exchange resin. The latter process is described in this column.

Technology Description

The process for sucrose inversion by ion-exchange resin shown in the simplified flowsheet below is similar to the one presented in U.S. Patent 8,404,109, published by European Sugar Holdings S.a.r.l. (Capellen, Luxembourg). An important feature of this process is the removal of ash from the solution in the ion-exchange columns.

Sucrose Dissolution

Water and steam are mixed to form a hot water stream. Part of this stream is added to raw sugar (sucrose) before it is fed to a screw conveyor, which directs wet sucrose to an agitated vessel. The remaining hot water is fed into the vessel, forming a 60 wt.% sucrose solution.